a refuge for tiny baby tree frogs
Each year, the number of native species that use my tiny urban pollinator meadow increases, with many beneficial insect species reproducing there or spending their entire life cycle there.
All of these were filmed in my tiny yard (Yalobusha Farms) in August, 2024.
Continue reading “Urban Ecological Oasis Videos, 2024”I made a video of the flying insects that are drawn to the native wildflowers in my tiny back yard.
The pink flower heads are joe pye weed, and the white flower clusters are white boneset (late boneset).
Continue reading “Native Pollinator Species Density and Diversity”
The tiny baby tree frog in the video has just swallowed a gnat.
Swallowing the gnat made her poop.
That is why she is scratching her butt with her hind leg. She is actually kicking away the feces.
When she “yawns,” she is actually burping.
Continue reading “Tiny Baby Tree Frog Scratches Butt & Yawns”
I filmed a video of some of my breeder Southern Toads (A. terrestis) eating earthworms in one of the four open-top terrariums.
Most of the diet (90%+) is fruit flies and fruit fly maggots that live on the pile of decomposing fruit peels in their terrariums.
Continue reading “Southern Toads (A. terrestris) Eating Earthworms”
In the spring of 2023, I purchased 200 Southern Toad (Bufo terrestris) tadpoles from a breeder for the purpose of restoring the local wild toad population.
I raised the tadpoles in the patio breeding tanks used by my neighborhood’s tree frogs.
I transferred the tiny toadlets to one of four plastic barrel bottoms that had been set up as open-top terrarium habitats, also located on my patio.
Continue reading “Southern Toad (Anaxyrus terrestris) Breeders”
There was an eight-week drought in April and May that caused the local rabbits to eat a lot of plant varieties they normally ignore, but the rains came in June, and the year recovered somewhat.
By August, there were numerous Tiger Swallowtail and Gulf Fritillary butterflies, although not as many as 2022.
I have many photos:
Continue reading “Pollinator Meadow 2023”
This tiny frog is too small to eat a mosquito.
Gnats and aphids and ants and baby spiders are probably what she can get into her mouth at this point.
She has to watch out for everything that might want to eat her, everything from dragonflies to spiders to birds to frogs.
In 2023, I managed to keep the juvenile green frogs (L. clamitans) out of the breeding tanks, and so the tree frogs (H. chrysoscelis) were able to reproduce without interference.
There was an eight-week drought in April and May, and so I suspected the year might be a disaster for wildlife, but when the rains came in June, the tree frogs started spawning and spawned most nights into July.
Continue reading “Tree Frog Tadpoles 2023”
This year was a hard year with no rains coming for 8 weeks during the months of April and May. Virtually the entire peach crop of Georgia was lost due to drought drop, and the rabbits in my yard ate zinnias and other plants they normally left alone.
This meant that most tree frogs in my neighborhood would not have a place to lay eggs and that my breeding tanks would be critical for that population.
This put a tremendous amount of pressure on me because last year when I set the tanks up, they were monopolized by Green Frogs (Lithobates clamitans), which eat the small Cope’s Gray Tree Frog (Hyla chrysoscelis) and overloaded the tanks with thousands of tadpoles.
Continue reading “Baby Tree Frogs 2023”
When you sew native pollinator seeds, stop mowing, and allow natural meadow to emerge an replace a lawn, you will have many visitors.
I’ve noticed that since my yard now has many songbirds and chipmunks and shrews and rabbits, there is usually a hawk or owl watching it hungrily.
Needless to say, I see many types of wildlife at night, but never rats. When I see rats, I see them making bee lines from the storm drains to the birdfeeders in the more conventional lawns around me.
Also, since I installed my mosquito fish ponds, I can go out in my back yard without a shirt for hours. When it was a standard lawn of Saint Augustine grass, it was swarming with mosquitos, mostly invasive Asian tiger mosquitos.
Native ecologies work.
Pictured above are joe pye weed and cup plant in the foreground and Mexican sunflower in the background.